Amazon: Pay Not to Play

ByHoma Zaryouni ·

13 August 2014

Amazon is known for being the Tony Soprano of e-commerce, forcing brands to partner with and distribute on the platform or else watch gray market sales on their products burgeon there. Brands such have Burberry have made small concessions; Burberry distributes 48 of its 72 fragrance SKUs on Amazon in exchange for a cleanup of the Burberry gray market. Some brands, however, have made their products disappear on Amazon with no concessions at all. Urban Decay, em Cosmetics and DeBeers products cannot be found on Amazon, not even through third-party sellers.

Of the ten Index brands in L2’s Amazon Intelligence Report with the least number of SKUs, all have enforced restrictions on third parties listing their products on Amazon. Meanwhile, the same brands are being distributed widely on eBay. For example, Tiffany & Co., Hermès and Louis Vuitton were widely available on eBay, but have zero, four, and seven SKUs on Amazon respectively.